Rand Paul’s Risks

From drugs to drones to immigration, reforming the GOP demands creativity—and maybe contradictions.

Rand Paul has emerged as the leading politician preaching the liberty-movement gospel, but occasionally he still runs afoul of the faithful. A recent example was the reaction to remarks he made at an evangelical gathering in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“I’m not advocating everyone go out and run around with no clothes on and smoke pot,” the Washington Post quoted Paul as saying. “I’m not a libertarian. I’m a libertarian Republican. I’m a constitutional conservative.”

Riggs’s colleague Nick Gillespie added, “If he’s serious about scraping the moss off the Republican Party, he needs to boldly defend his most contrarian, libertarian positions rather than temper his comments based on his speaking venue.”

Indeed, reforming the GOP is as much the task Paul has set for himself as seeking its presidential nomination in 2016. He is unusually popular with young activists for a member of his party. He has spoken at venues like historically black Howard University, where he is less likely to encounter Republican voters than in Cedar Rapids.

Sometimes his efforts to broaden the party’s appeal have sat uneasily alongside his quest to be the most reliable Tea Party conservative. This has led him to thread some important needles—and also occasionally sound too equivocal. Issues like marriage, abortion, immigration, and even drugs may prove difficult to straddle.

Gillespie worries that if “Paul continues to send significantly different messages to different audiences, he will end up alienating all his possible supporters.”

That’s a real risk. But if one could win the Republican presidential nomination by sounding like Gary Johnson, Johnson would have stayed in the GOP primaries rather than running as the Libertarian Party nominee.

To win the nomination, Paul must build on his father’s strong showings in states like Iowa and New Hampshire while attracting the votes of Republicans who supported Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and even Mitt Romney in 2012. To reform the party, he cannot afford to alienate everyone already in it.

During the last GOP presidential race, Ron Paul was asked at an early candidates’ debate why Christian conservatives in South Carolina should vote for him. The straitlaced Texas congressman was pro-life, a supporter of religious liberty, and—quelle surprise!—no booster of same-sex marriage. But his answer focused on legalizing heroin, including an amusing impression of a would-be smack addict.

The elder Paul finished fourth in South Carolina, beginning the descent of his promising 2012 campaign. He accomplished the first step—building a movement that could one day change the Republican Party—but more is required to complete the journey.

Rand Paul’s problems are the Republican Party’s. The GOP must find a way to speak to new people and grow, without repelling its current base. It must determine how best to adapt old principles to changing political circumstances, building a fresh case for what conservatives consider permanent things.

That’s no easy task, so it’s unsurprising Paul has stumbled at times. But more Republicans need to be trying. Most other outreach-oriented Republicans tend to disrespect the base and its values, in style if not substance—think Jon Huntsman, for example. Many conservatives simply repeat campaign slogans of the Reagan era.

A more robust federalism might help both pro-lifers and drug-legalizers realize more of their short-term policy goals than rhetoric about ending either Roe v. Wade or the war on drugs ever could. Libertarians might learn to shrink government the way statists have often expanded it—through incremental steps—with politically achievable things like more lenient sentences for drug offenders, freeing more people than by talking about heroin.

But to succeed within any political party, one must first make common cause with the rank and file. Those of like mind with Paul might want to consider this verse when next in Cedar Rapids: “Be therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

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28 Responses to Rand Paul’s Risks

He already has too many nonstarters for me. And if he is calculating his message I am not interested at all. Just spit it out whether I agree or not. Muddying the stangarg cognitive dissonence by couching his on beliefs via how I might respond is the worst kind of politics.

I am fine ith choosing one’s words wisely, but tailoring a message to something I might like to hear is insulting. I have far more respect for someone I disagree with who attempts to convince or coach me that his way is effective or at least not more damaging.

Sen. Paul convince me that we need to ease immigration laws and just how ill that bebefit me — and other US citizens.

Watching Ron Paul I have to wonder if older Republican voters thought they were seeing George McGovern trying to win their party’s nomination. (To a certain extent their campaigns were quite similar).

2012 was a much a different time than 1972. There were no candidate debates in 1972 which allowed McGovern, who was a fresh face to most voters, to gain support from unlikely places. It wasn’t until those gaps were filled in that his support dropped. Unfortunately for Ron Paul, that happened a lot earlier in the process.

But Ron Paul, like McGovern, was the start of something not the end of it. The trick that Rand has to pull is get a party, which is still largely tribal, to accept the individualistic society we’ve become. There are some areas, particularly in economics which this can be done. But if I’m one of Rand’s opponents 2016, one of the questions I would ask him his “Are you in favor of privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority?” and then see, if he says yes, his support in the middle South drops like a rock given all the middle class jobs tied up with the TVA, or see if he tries to give convoluted answer which either will split his support once again or show him to be quite skilled politician. We’ll see how he can pull it off.

Most of the young conservatives I know in Silicon Valley (and their numbers are few) care most about debt and financial sustainability. They think it is immoral to build an unsustainable society on debt and welfare.

Red states have better governance than blue states. That’s an issue that republicans should brand themselves with – “we won’t drive the country off a cliff”.

“A more robust federalism might help both pro-lifers and drug-legalizers realize more of their short-term policy goals than rhetoric about ending either Roe v. Wade or the war on drugs ever could. Libertarians might learn to shrink government the way statists have often expanded it—through incremental steps—with politically achievable things like more lenient sentences for drug offenders, freeing more people than by talking about heroin.”

A more robust federalism means ending Roe v. Wade, as well as Washington’s war on drugs. Ever since the Roe decision was handed down in the 70’s, the primary issue was not ending abortion, it was returning to the states what the Court had taken away from them – the authority to write their own abortion laws. And until FDR’s appointments fashioned a limitless interpretation of the Commerce Clause in the 30’s and 40’s, the Supreme Court would have countenanced Federal prohibition of narcotic drugs no more than, absent a Constitutional Amendment, it did the prohibition of alcohol.

I really think pressing his credentials as a “Constitutional Conservative” is the key to Rand Paul’s uniting disparate elements of the Republican Party and the larger constituency they need to build. Whether the issue is abortion, gun control, gay marriage or drugs, reversing the expansive readings of the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment which have allowed Congress and the Federal Courts to usurp the states’ constitutional place in the Federal system will give to advocates on both sides of hot button issues the opportunity of achieving the laws they wish to live under, in their own state or another they choose to move to, at the ballot box. Both libertarians and social conservatives have been frustrated for years by the actions of Congress and the Federal Courts. By uniting these two disconsolate constituencies with those who want balanced budgets, sound money and an end to wars abroad, Rand Paul can both promise all relief from the frustration they’ve suffered and win the race to the White House.

I concur. Rand has often been rather amateurish politically and has no experience in an executive role. This isn’t at all a deal-breaker for me, however. We must wait to see the alternatives, for we may be presented with a choice between a bad manager trying to do good things and a good manager trying to do bad things.

even if one does not have that experience. I am looking at their understanding of some basic management, i.e. Illegal immigration — he seems oblivious as to the impact on the countries economics and wholly barred from an understanding that currently citizens are not so inclined given the conditions economically. And that he grasps the more subtle message that corporations are and other financial structures are manufacturing a positive market to influence the overall sentiment on the matter.

My last is a bit speculative — but given just how broken the structures are financially and just how deep the crisis was across the globe —- a trillion dollar bailout was a tad short on ecovery.

@ William Dalton: You are of course right about Roe v. Wade. A better example for the point I was trying to make is the human life amendment. Every four years Republican presidential candidates endorse sweeping measures that will never be voted on much less pass and don’t protect a single unborn child.

“The first presidential straw poll was held in Nashville, Tennessee last weekend. Out of 373 votes cast, Rand Paul won 219. Last Friday, Rand Paul won the Presidential straw poll at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, also with a majority. Victory comes after Rand Paul won the more prominent CPAC Presidential straw poll.”

@W. James Antle III: I agree with you completely. Ever since Republicans took charge of the Senate in the 1980’s, I couldn’t understand the strategy of putting forward the Human Life Amendment, creating a national prohibition of most abortions, when it was clear there was no public will to pass such an amendment. Simply reversing Roe v. Wade, which would give something to both abortion rights proponents and their adversaries, always seemed to me to be the compromise which would move this issue off the national political stage, if the mainstream of the electorate insisted the advocates move the debate back to the state level. I eventually concluded that the failure of both parties to achieve this settlement was due to the fact neither is really interested in ending the fight. They both are happy to keep it going as a reliable means for rousing the troops and raising money. I hope Rand Paul and his supporters will insist on breaking the logjam.

The objective: to break the stranglehold the globalist establishment has on politics, thanks to their allies in the media boardrooms.

Rand Paul is not one of the globalists, so they will not support him no matter what he does. Many have tried to ally with them through guile, but unless you submit to them completely they will destroy you.

But what does Rand do to gain their support? He starts alienating and dividing the Ron Paul movement which is the only place he can turn for activists in his presidential campaign. He will not have big donors or media bosses on his side, their support will go to the most pro-Zionist, pro-immigration candidates. He needs the Ron Paul Movement. And he is snubbing it over and over again.

It is one thing to keep quiet about issues. It is another to betray your principles in those issues.

I was with Rand Paul until he….

…made the criminal statement that the U.S. should regard an attack on the anti-Christian hate-state Israel as an attack on America, which it wouldn’t be.

…completely wasted the goodwill from his filibuster by turning around 180 degrees, for no reason, and saying it would be okay to murder a robber coming out of a convenience store with a missile fired from a drone, in a U.S. city.

…said that libertarians run around naked and smoke pot, which he knows doesn’t fit the majority of libertarians – who for the most part simply seek a strong political label to rally under, after the GOP globalists have hijacked “conservative”.

Some say Rand Paul is just playing the game. Yes, he is. Badly. And you think that guy can win the presidency? He is incompetent. I really wished he wouldn’t be, but he is. He will just keep making mistakes. We need someone else.

The major hurdle for any GOP candidate is the complete disconnect that GOP voters have between entitlement spending and the national debt. Telling GOP voters that food stamps are the problem rather than their Medicare checks is definitely what they want to hear. But you end up with nonsensical economic positions. Hence Bill Clinton absolutely shredding Romney and Ryan’s economic plan at last year’s DNC.

I don’t think the GOP can field a fiscally serious candidate until GOP voters come to terms with what their own entitlements contribute to the national debt. And if voters in South Carolina actually think that a President Paul would result in them receiving a lower Medicare check, it’s hard to see him winning the GOP nomination.

I have yet to hear how he would win over the moderate middle while holding so many far-right positions. If you’re running to the right of Romney, you’ve got a lot of ground to make up, and Paul hasn’t shown any real capability to branch out that far.

I’ve admired Ron Paul for years, but have been very disappointed in Rand. He is not a “Constitutional Republican,” since he wants to use the coercive power of the federal government to force his beliefs on people via the legislative process. Some examples are his support for the War on Drugs, the Life Begins at Conception Act and preemptive invasions of other countries. No thanks, that is more of the same Bog Government crap that libertarians and others who believe in liberty reject.

“a party, which is still largely tribal, to accept the individualistic society we’ve become.”

What pray is an “individualistic society”?

For that matter if you want an individualistic society that calls itself 2 political parties you may examine the actual workings of the United States Congress. The money flows to – the individual Congressmen. This reform ended the pure political party as they cannot fund. They offer a franchise brand. Results vary.

We have One political party, the Inner Party is called Democratic, the outer party Republican, they are the party of the State. The people as of yet have no party, when they attempted it with success the State rebounded with all it’s alphabet soup to intimidate it and repress it – and they did.

You may rest assured this behavior will be repeated – repression of the peoples actual party – as it succeeded.

The actual Republican base could best be described as their own professionals refer to them: Rubes.

Mr. Paul may not be able to accept this, he may have a congenital ability to construct fantasies.

Mr. Rubio accepts it and has boldly chosen – Tribe. It is not mine, so I shan’t be considering him. If he gets his bill passed he chose wisely. Certainly he chose boldly.

Latest Quinnipiac University Iowa Poll :
“In an early look at the 2016 White House race, Ms. Clinton would defeat Sen. Rubio of Florida 48 – 37 percent. In a race against Sen. Paul of Kentucky, she would have a very small 46 – 42 percent margin.